Snapchat reassures users it's not saving their selfies

Andrew Wright

Social media service Snapchat has moved to reassure users that it isn’t saving their pictures, after changes to terms and conditions were criticised in the media.

The terms of Service and Privacy Policies were amended on 28 October, and many media outlets were quick to pick up on the following clause: “By uploading pictures onto the service, you grant Snapchat a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed)".

Snapchat sought to clarify matters in a recent blogpost, stating: “The Snaps and Chats you send your friends remain as private today as they were before the update”.

They go on to explain that all messages are automatically deleted once they have been viewed by the recipient, however users can still screenshot images if they choose to do so.

With that in mind then, it might be best to follow the following advice from Snapchat’s privacy policy: “The same common sense that applies to the Internet at large applies to Snapchat as well: Don’t send messages that you wouldn’t want someone to save or share."